Miscellaneous Hacks - Rotating Banner System

With the Rotating Banner System software, you may publish literally anywhere standard banners and advertising, with no restriction but your imagination. Unlike many other products, it allows to show an unlimited amount of banners and advertising, which are randomly shown at the places you choose, and you may refer generically to an Ad by using specific placeholders.

Also the management is straight-forward and simple to use. Forum administrators with maintenance rights may add, edit and delete records from the Administration Control Panel (ACP), one of each representing a banner. After saving the new banner settings, they are immediately visible at your board.

Compatibility: from vBulletin 3.6.5 onwards

By the way, I do also install the hack on your boards, but since I am very, very busy, it may take some time (weeks) until it gets done.


Tutorials:

• How-to create my first banner (Flash).

Updates:

• 2.0.1: Simple click tracker added, HTML help included.
• 2.0.3: Small bug fixes; additional banner list, navigation bar, E-Mail field for banner event notifications and automatic save on scroll setting; absolute URL to rbs_banner.php in order to allow click tracking on non-standard pages; supported languages: English, Italian; Help file clean-up.
• 2.0.5: Small bug fixes; additional details in banner list; email notification for epired banners.
• 2.0.6: vbCMS compatibility bug fix; additional banner lists.
• 2.0.7: Usergroups filter: now it is possible to define a list of usergroups which may show a banner; additional vbCMS compatibility bug fix.
• 2.0.8: Various fixes and most of all, inclusion of the right files: admin_rbs.php, cpnav_rbs.xml
• 2.0.9: Extra comma fix in new record creation.
• 2.1.0: Fix for an occasional banner type selection bug, when the sample banners have been deleted or disabled.
• 2.2.0 (Major upgrade): Up to 10 different banner locations. Requires changes to your existing placeholders in your templates, since a more generic format has been chosen. If you don't need more than 2 different locations, you don't need to upgrade. Changed files: rbs_banner.php, admin_rbs.php
• 2.2.1: Minor bug fix in files: admin_rbs_h_banner_list.php, admin_rbs_v_banner_list.php
• 2.2.1: Hotfix for Max Clicks saving bug.
• 2.2.2: More listings and less files. PDF Help. Separate Italian add-ons and help. Duplicate button.
• 2.2.3: Minor bug fixes. Changed files: product-rbs.xml
• 2.2.4: Flash Banner support (beta). Changed files: product-rbs.xml, rbs_wrapper.swf, admin_rbs.php, English Help.
• 2.2.5: Hotfix for vBulletin 4.0.2 compatibility bug.
• 2.2.6: Checking for installed Flash Wrapper rbs_wrapper.swf; A few English FAQ; Help files. Changed files: product-rbs.xml
• 2.3.0 (Major upgrade): New modules: Delete Expired Banners, Disable Expired Banners; Detail Banner Statistics with unique access key for your customers; Updated help; Changed files: all.
• 2.3.1: Hotfix for missing field in rbs_hist table. Changed files: none, just update product.
• 2.3.2: Added: Unsupported option for setting any number of available positions between 1 and big bang. Fixed: Small bug and speed issues. Removed: Italian translation. Italians may now request support at www.vbulletin.it. Changed files: admin_rbs.php.
• 2.3.3: Fix: Copy selected forum ID's during banner duplication. Changed: start and end hours for new banners are set to 0:00 and 23:59 respectively. Changed files: admin_rbs.php.
• 2.3.4: Option: Send Mail Before. This option allows to schedule expiring banners differently. New variables for emails: $rbs_enddate: This variable holds the formatted banner ending date and time based on the standard formats for date and time in vBulletin settings; $rbs_name: This variable holds the banner name. EMail Notifications option description: Added direct links to the email phrases for quick changes. Changed files: rbs_mail_cron.php.
• 2.4.0 (Major upgrade): Removed: Option to enable or disable mailing. Banners with email addresses to notify are handled. Setting to reset mailing in single banners. Now, if mailing should be repeated, you will have to edit the banner from phpMyAdmin. Added: Order links in lists. The initial state is ordered by ID, as before. By clicking the titles, the other voices can be ordered. Clicking twice inverts the order. This works in all lists. Options to prevent counting and reducing thus a tiny bit of load. A new bunch of demo banners for new installations. Demo banners are locked into database in order to avoid 30% of the questions because of the 'experts' deleting them before trying the product. They can be disabled and modified though. The true experts can delete them after all testing from the database by using phpMyAdmin without side effects. Changes: Phrase for emailing about expiring banners, now also with direct links to the phrases. Demo banners. Our old publisher ID is replaced with the new ones, and old demo banners are updated with the new ones, if found. The functions have been exported to includes/functions_rbs.php. This makes the product code smaller and easier to maintain, and runs faster on sites where caching/acceleration is enabled. Changed Files: all *.php
• 2.4.1: Option Likelihood. This new option adds a weight to banners and allows thus to show one banner more often than another. The default weight is 100%. We also make sure that the final date of the default banners falls into a valid range. Changed files: includes/functions_rbs.php and rbs_stats.php.
• 2.4.2: Workaround for update sequence problems.

Hacks and unsupported add-ons:

• Banner Rotator Widget To CMS
• Rotate banners in-place
• Italian Translation

[Videx]

We just use Photoshop or whatever other graphics app is handy. No special software required. My biggest problem is creativity. It's not easy to keep coming up with brand new designs. Especially ones that fit in with all of our styles.

[Nelson58]

Originally Posted by Videx

We just use Photoshop or whatever other graphics app is handy. No special software required. My biggest problem is creativity. It's not easy to keep coming up with brand new designs. Especially ones that fit in with all of our styles.

I assume you simply store them in the images file on your site and point the rotating ad mod to that URL.


Nelson

[Videx]

Originally Posted by Allthumbz

I assume you simply store them in the images file on your site and point the rotating ad mod to that URL.


Nelson

Yes, is there any other way?

[Breixo]

Working on 4.1.12, it takes some time to learn how to use it but it's well documented.

Thanks!

[J709AB9E5C42]

Originally Posted by y2ksw

I'm not sure if I understood your question. On the other hand, I see you have banners all over the place ... if there are problems, maybe we rather handle each single instance than all together ...

1. What should happen in forum home, and what happens instead?
2. What should happen in the forum sections, and what happens instead?
3. What should happen in the threads, and what happens instead?

It's taken me a while to get back to the site, but I'm still having trouble.

So I found that little box in settings that says to show only on homepage... I unchecked that so that all the banners should be rotating evenly throughout the site. NOW the problem I have is that NONE of the banners are showing up on the homepage! How do I get the banners to show up on the homepage? I've selected ALL the forum selections in the Forum options of the settings. Thanks! (the banner area I'm referencing is the top main header area)
www.fordgtalley.com

[tamiyausa]

Ok I have a weird one.

VB4.2
VBadvanced CMPS

Banners show
But you can not click on them? Yes there is a link in the "URL" spot.

Any ideas?

[rhody401]

I have noticed a small one too, in the past several versions:

The start and end dates fields... The times will change sometimes, after you save them.

Set it, save it, go back and check and it has different times.

I always assumed it had to do with me and my server being in different time zones - or something of that sort.

Has anyone else seen this behavior?

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by Videx

Yes, is there any other way?

You may also hotlink banners from other sites and link them to your landing pages

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by J709AB9E5C42

It's taken me a while to get back to the site, but I'm still having trouble.

So I found that little box in settings that says to show only on homepage... I unchecked that so that all the banners should be rotating evenly throughout the site. NOW the problem I have is that NONE of the banners are showing up on the homepage! How do I get the banners to show up on the homepage? I've selected ALL the forum selections in the Forum options of the settings. Thanks! (the banner area I'm referencing is the top main header area)
www.fordgtalley.com

1. To show a banner on all pages, deselect the "Home" option and also don't select any of the sections; this is the default for new banners.
2. To show a banner on home and pages which have no section (PM, profile etc), select the "Home" option and don't select any of the sections.
3. To show the banner in one or more sections but the home, deselect the "Home" option and select the desired sections and subsections (they don't propagate permissions).
4. To show the banner in one or more sections and the home, you need to create one banner for the home and one for the sections.

Hope this helps

[y2ksw]

Originally Posted by rhody401

I have noticed a small one too, in the past several versions:

The start and end dates fields... The times will change sometimes, after you save them.

Set it, save it, go back and check and it has different times.

I always assumed it had to do with me and my server being in different time zones - or something of that sort.

Has anyone else seen this behavior?

It is a server issue. If the time zone of the MySQL server isn't the same as the server's timezone, there may be a time shift for one or more hours each time you save. The problem goes usually away when synching time with NTP once and then on all servers.